The “Annual Meeting” between the European Commission, the manager authorities of the FEDER and Cohesion Fund programmes and the Cohesion Fund of the Portuguese NSRF (National Strategic Reference Framework) was held in Liverpool on November 17. The Azores were represented at the meeting by the Regional Directorate for the Planning and Structural Funds who is in charge for the management of the PROCONVERGENCIA programme.

The manager authorities the programmes were questioned at the meeting on the various aspects of the implementation of Community support such as the compliance with EU competition policy, public procurement, communication policy, assessment results and the analysis of the financial and material implementation, among others.

Regarding the PROCONVERGENCIA programme, it was stressed that it was the first program to obtain a letter of acceptance on the validation of the management system, being the only Portuguese programme that has surpassed the first financial goal, on which possible losses of Community funding might occur. In effect, the 203 million Euros allocated for the execution of public expenditure, which corresponds to 161 million Euros of Community funds are justified and the injection of over 160 million Euros in the regional economy through payments to Azorean beneficiaries highlighted PROCONVERGENCIA as the programme with the best financial performance under the national NSRF.

Furthermore, a situation that has raised technical and political questions was discussed at the meeting, being related to the so-called spillover effects (or diffusion effects), to the allocation of investment amounts and of Community subsidies to the convergence regions, where the Azores are included; however, some the supported projects are located in Lisbon and thus they are not eligible. It was clarified, according to the notice of the Vice-Presidency of the Government of the Azores, that this situation is not applicable to the Azores and it will not have any influence concerning the amounts allocated to the Azores for the period 2007-2013.

It was proposed that the next annual meeting should be held in the Azores, which was accepted by the regional delegation.